The Term 'Hypocrisy' Doesn't Even Do It Justice

For days after he returned from his trip from Asia, President Trump stayed silent on the deluge of sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men in every prominent industry—including politics. As the number of women who accused Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore grew from four to seven, there was little from the White House and nothing from Trump's Twitter account. But when allegations surfaced Thursday against a Democrat—Senator Al Franken of Minnesota—it was all too much for the president. He couldn't resist, and chimed in the very same day:

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The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps? .....

You've got to think some feckless White House aide tried in vain to prevent this. But there's no stopping our Large Adult President from shooting his yap once he's decided he needs to get his words out. The allegations made against Franken by former model Leeann Tweeden are very bad. Many, including Franken himself, have called for a Senate ethics investigation, and some—including quite a few Democrats and liberals—are calling for his resignation. But this, from the president, is typically tactless, hypocritical, and completely allergic to dignity.

The president's jokey nickname is a clear indication he doesn't actually take this seriously. (It's also another battle in his war on spelling.) That's why he didn't weigh in on the accusations against Moore, the lawless theocrat accused by more than a half-dozen women of behavior ranging from the creepy to actual assault—behavior that, at the time, got him banned from his local mall. No, the president doesn't care about Franken's accuser or what he did. It's just a political football, an opportunity to score some points.

He was also caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault. Here's a reminder of what that sounded like:

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Trump also had the gall to essentially call Franken a hypocrite for "lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women." This is Hypocrisy Inception—a level of shamelessness on top of shamelessness. The "Leslie Stahl tape," by the way, is not a tape, but refers to an old New York magazine article on the Saturday Night Live writers' room that featured Franken making a joke about sexually assaulting Stahl, a 60 Minutes correspondent.

The wise thing would have been for Trump to stay silent. The just thing would have been to condemn Moore's alleged behavior as well. But by now, we know the president isn't particularly concerned with either of those things. The question, as ever, is whether this was a tactical decision by the president, a way to draw the public's attention away from something else, or whether he just has brain worms.

If it was the former, perhaps Trump is trying to keep our eyes off the plutocratic Republican tax bill hurtling through Congress. The House passed a version yesterday, and the Senate Finance Committee rammed its own version through on a party-line vote at close to midnight last night. There have been no public hearings on the bill, which would fundamentally transform our tax system. Maybe Republicans are eager to keep it low-key because pretty much every assessment of the bill finds it will raise taxes on some middle-class families, and throw certain groups—teachers, blue-state upper-middle-class taxpayers, graduate students—under the bus to finance corporate tax cuts and this:

You'd want to keep the public's eyes averted, too. But it always seems like giving the president too much credit to ascribe his behavior to a grand plan. It seems more likely he just can't resist reaching out and grabbing things.

Jack HolmesPolitics EditorJack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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